House Swap

Rick Steves has an informative article on house swapping that you might want to read, and gives links to reputable agencies. https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/sleeping-eating/house-swapping-tips

FWIW, an acquaintance of mine has been house swapping every year for the last 30 years and she mostly uses Home Exchange.

Since 1995 we have been using the second organization Mardee links above, Homelink.org, and have done more than 30 house exchanges. You’ve picked a tough country to start with. In the 1000s of inquiries we’ve gotten over the years, in our west coast beach city, only one from Italy ever happened for us. It’s not impossible to arrange an exchange in Italy but it is more difficult. You can log in to any of the organizations, some have been in business for almost 70 years, linked above and see potential exchange countries and homes. The work comes with deciding who might be the most receptive and available match to come to your area. Good luck reading up on it and asking questions. A few of us on this forum use exchanges as another way to spend time in Europe.

I will echo what Mona says. Home exchange works best if you are open to travel new places, rather than having a specific destination ((like Italy) in mind.

We belonged to HomeExchange.com for about 5 years and had one satisfactory exchange in that time, with a couple in Vienna ( their request). We spent a week in their apartment in the city in 2017. Vienna was a place that was not on our travel list, but it well with a planned trip to Slovenia, so we did it, and enjoyed our time there.

Apart from that, we had many, many requests (hundreds) to exchange with people around the US, and places abroad that we were not interested in. We tried to accommodate some of the people who wanted to come to Seattle and stay in our home, so we started accepting points. Home Exchange has a point system so you can accumulate points from people coming to stay in your home instead of staying in theirs, and then use the points to stay in a home you choose. In theory, at least. But our experience was that NO ONE in the places we wanted to go—all over Italy, plus London—-would accept points.

Once one of the parties explained their refusal to me, it made sense. The whole system of home exchange is based on mutual trust—-you trust that the people staying in your home will treat it well, because they know that you are staying in theirs. Under the point system, that mutuality is lost. So we quit doing home exchanges, and have no regrets.

I am sure that Cape Cod is a desirable location for many tourists, but probably not for Italians, or most Europeans. They mainly come to the US to visit New York, Florida (Disney World, Las Vegas, California (Los Angeles or San Francisco), and our national parks, especially in the western US.

One caution if you do decide to proceed—-it can be a lot of work to get your home ready for strangers to occupy. For security reasons, any computer or tablet you do not take with you, all sensitive financial documents and files, and any valuable jewelry, etc. has to be locked away. And it is best to set up a separate guest network for your wifi, rather than give them the password to yours. There is probably more if you are super cautious, but those are the steps we took.

And you have to prepare yourself for the possibility of some kind of accidental damage. The Viennese couple were the only guests who did not cause some kind of damage to our kitchenware or furnishings. The people who placed our electric kettle on the gas stove and burned it up replaced it, but the one they destroyed was a gift from our son and not really replaceable. The couple who broke a bowl from our dinnerware set apologized and left the pieces for us to repair, but it is not the same after being glued back together. The family that caused a tear in the upholstery of our den sofa denied it until I sent them a photo, then admitted that their children had been jumping around on the furniture. The mother offered to pay for recovering the cushion, but the fabric would not match, so I declined the offer. We keep that sofa cushion turned over so the tear is out of sight.

The home exchange company does have a way to charge guests a reasonable fee for damage done to your home, but I did not feel it was appropriate in any of these circumstances.

We have done several house exchanges with varying degrees of success, all during the years we lived in the S.F. Bay Area. We were never able to pull off an exchange in Italy. My conclusion was that despite listing for exchange, what many Italians really wanted was to rent out their vacation homes.
Also, I would caution you about your attitude of “I’ll go anywhere in Italy.” Check out locations very carefully. Find out how long it takes to get to a main road from the property. How long to a market? Is there a neighbor or relative close by who can be consulted if problems crop up? Just as an example, we did one exchange (in France) where the house was up a very long, steep road, so no walking to town. The owners were not on speaking terms with their neighbors. The village might have been the only one in France that lacked a boulangerie. The people’s English was so poor that we could not figure out how to turn on the stove or the ac from the directions they left. There were lots of other issues. We had a pretty good time; but if we had known what all the negatives were, I wouldn’t have chosen that experience.
As someone noted above, good preparation is absolutely basic to success. Eventually, we decided that it was too much hassle and stopped house exchanging.

Great advise. I used to own a home in the Caribbean and thru various forums, found "strangers" to pet sit for 15 years and had two bad experiences out of 50+. I will heed the good advice.

Aw, shucks. You mean it doesn't always end in true love like in "The Holiday"?
😄